Mog

By the time Mog had learnt of Sharli's whereabouts and tracked her down the sun was high in the sky and the underground was beginning to bake as the heat soaked through the earth, helped by the ample fires burning, intensifying the humidity and the dank stink of sweat. The Redguard had been sent to do labour work in the storage room, thus it was there that Mog found her, padding into the room and glancing around to check they were alone before he snuck up on her.

"Divines be damned Moggy, don't do that, or one day someone will stick you with steel instead of laugh," she warned him gruffly after he had approached her turned back stealthily, unnoticed, and had pounced her shoulders, cackling fiercely, but his voice was wobbly as he did so as he thought of sudden goodbyes.

Shrugging him off a little callously, Sharli went about her work of sorting through the new weaponry the guild had scavenged whilst muttering to herself; manual work always made her crabby. "I'd like to see them try," Mog sniffed haughtily, although it was not without a smile. "Here, I'll help you and we'll get it done in half the time."

Vanryth the blacksmith had wanted them to sort the weapons out into crates by type, and then to compile those that looked rusted, badly crafted or battered to be smelted down and forged into something they could sell for a profit. This kind of thing was only ever done a few times a year, the stores allowed to just build up over time, but this meant that once it needed doing, they had a damn large horde to work through, and the fences and merchants always wanted the pretty things put aside for them to make a neat deal out of. Sharli didn't take well to the need to be organised or having to do the same sorting process on repeat, but Mog was used to it, what with having Gah-Ju as a guardian, so he contently took the reigns in the operation.

They worked in silence, Mog running about and fetching whilst Sharli called the shots with sullen gestures and grunts on what went where and the quiet was not uncomfortable, even though there was so much that Mog wanted to say. "What did the lizard want with you then?" Sharli asked eventually, and Mog wondered if she'd been meditating on the question all along, or if she'd only just remembered. He paused in his work and looked over at her, stood by a crate with the reject tools crashed down within it.

Swallowing, he kept his eyes averted as he tried to work out how to say it. "He was high again wasn't he?" She guessed, incorrectly so, her tone sharp and critical, but when she noted his body language and downcast eyes, it softened. "I can talk to Brynjolf if you'd like, he can talk to him, it worked last time didn't it? For a bit anyway." She was trying to comfort him. Perhaps it was just because they were to part ways in a matter of hours, maybe only minutes, but for once her concern left him feeling deeply touched.

Grinning through what could have been tears, he shook his head, doubling back to go and take that which she had deemed to be sorted into this and that and to transport it. When he drew up before her, he knew she'd see his eyes and expression, and so he faced her bravely, his eyes drying as he smiled at her, a look of comradeship. "We're leaving," he told her quietly, his voice small but the meaning of finality was clear.

Whilst she simply watched him, he took the two items, a curved steel sword that looked to be sky forge steel and a neat little dagger with a black handle, and went to place them both in the merchants' piling area. "Leaving?" Sharli repeated as he left her, turning around to face him as he moved.

"Leaving Riften, you, Brynjolf, everything. Gah-Ju said we had to disappear," Mog elaborated, sounding a little tired and pained with the idea, but he'd accepted it with a resigned sense of inevitability. He'd often felt as though they might have to leave; there was no obvious reason for this that he could name, but he felt there was a subtly in the way that Gah-Ju had always treated everything, the way he kept himself detached and always tried to ensure that Mog was on his toes. It had always felt as though he were getting ready to leave. Now it seemed that time had come.

"Where are you going?" Sharli inquired curiously as Mog crouched down and gently set the curved sword amongst the other similar weapons, down on the floor of the relatively empty crate.

Shaking his head, Mog confessed he had no idea. "You're not coming back, are you?" They both knew the answer to that question, and so Mog did not feel the need to answer verbally. Instead he simply stood and paced over to stand before a barrel, upon which sat a lit lamp and the other few daggers that were pretty enough to be worth fencing.

Turning the dagger over in his hands, the handle cool against his fingers, Mog bit down on his lip as a mix of guilt and loss messed with his head. He couldn't bring himself to turn around and face her yet, for now the silence was definitely uncomfortable. "I'm sorry Shar."

Quiet remained even after he had spoken and it made his back prickle defensively, the way it always did whenever Mog felt someone unwanted watching him. Sniffling slightly, feeling rather pitiful and shame-faced in that moment, he swallowed his pride and fear and turned to face his best friend for their final goodbye.

It took his brain far too long to process what was in front of him, and it had a rather appalling priority list. At first all he noticed was that Sharli looked completely different; she no longer looked like Sharli in the slightest. Gone was her usual grim smile, no trace of humour or cynicism in her expression, only a dead, flat cold that sent an unwelcome shiver through Mog, her mouth a tight line and her eyes darker and watching. Her body had changed too; gone were the usual jaunty angles and the air of arrogance that seemed to cling to all young adults; instead in their place was a whole new presence, one that seemed all at once both powerful and concealed, her back arched over slightly. She closely resembled a Night Cat waiting to pounce.

Next came the noticing of the weapon clutched in her hand; it was certainly not one belonging to the Thieves Guild, nor one that had been stolen. It was beautiful -another fact that Mog really ought to have not dwelt on- and it was mesmerising almost to the point of being hypnotic, forged from some strange black metal, the likes of which Mog had never seen, a blue glimmer to its edge where the light caught it, shifting like the reflection of the sun on water. Its shape was that of a long, thin dagger with a subtle curve to the blade, the handle wrapped in a deep green material. Finally, when it was far too late, Mog noticed that she had launched herself at him.

He didn't resist, not at first, so she brought him straight to the floor, pinning him as she had always done in their games of make believe fighting. It all felt so familiar that Mog took a few moments to realise just what was happening; he only just managed to grasp his bearings in time to skid himself sideways when she tried to bring her blade down through his throat.

Her knees had failed to find good footing on the floor, splayed either side of his legs so he was secured, but the floor was uneven and her left knee was caught in a pothole, so in a moment of panicked instinct he threw her off, flipping her off of him as he scrambled like a frightened mouse in an attempt to flee. He was quick, as he always had been, but she'd seized his ankles before he could clear the area around her and she tugged him back down to the ground just as quickly as he had pulled himself up.

It became a game of fisty-cuffs as Mog flipped himself on over to his back so he was at least facing her, batting back at her strikes at him. By a stroke of great luck his wild scrapping with her hands managed to knock the dagger from her grip, but this only seemed to focus her more as she snarled, her eyes wild and not ones he recognised anymore. They had played this game a hundred times and every time the outcome had been the same. This time Sharli wouldn't need to say, "you're dead" to him, because this time it was all too real.

The realisation of death was somewhat cut short however when her strength over powered his attempt to hold her back and she pressed through to connect her hands to his neck, her fingers ensnaring him and she quickly cut off his blood flow. Gagging, the beginning light-headedness setting in, Mog was sobbing now, the shock of his best friend trying to murder him too much with the accompanying knowledge that he was going to die. Trapped like a rat, he flailed wildly, trying to grab at her in an attempt to push her off somehow.

All of a sudden, the hands on his neck went slack and the body that had been pinning him suddenly toppled forward so that Sharli's head fell with a loud crack onto the floor space beside Mog's, her hair going into his eyes slightly. Sucking in breath as his body shook, Mog gaped up at the ceiling in total shock, dizzy and disorientated, but becoming gradually more aware of the hot damp sensation that was soaking underneath and through him.

No one else was in the room with him, save the corpse collapsed across him. He panted, motionless as silent tears streaked down his cheeks for a moment before remembering himself, yelping a little as he scuttled out from under the body, backing up against the closest wall, crouching as he looked over at the body, limp and at an awkward angle from where he had disturbed it.

Bringing his hands to his face to wipe the tears there, Mog discovered he was still holding the small dagger with the black handle from earlier in a rigid, vice like grip, his knuckles ghostly pale. More disturbing was the coat of blood that was slowly dripping down onto the floor from its blade, along with the understanding of what exactly had happened. Mog glanced back at the body.

"Shar," he whispered in a ghost of his usual voice. "Shar." Rocking back, he slumped against the wall, pushing his legs out before him as he simply collapsed, staring at the body. "Shar." He continued repeating the name over and over again until it became a sort of mantra, his voice sounding desolately lost as he quaked slightly, but no more tears came.

She was now lying in a pool of her own blood, that which now also stained Mog's shoulder and was soaked into his hair. To Mog she'd always seemed big, since he was so small, but as her body now lay there crumpled she seemed tiny even to him, only a child, totally unmoving as her face remained down, obscured by her hair. He didn't know what he was supposed to make of this; they had known one another from childhood and had grown up together, playing the same games, causing the same trouble and fighting one another's battles. They were children, but as street children they had been brothers in arms. And now she had tried to murder him without so much as a word of explanation. Yet he had been the one to kill her.

A shout from down out in the main cavern of the Thieves Guild Headquarters awoke him from his daze, and after looking over the body one last time, Mog turned heel and fled, not really seeing anyone else as he ran, despite the fact that the surrounding people had been his family his whole life and he was to leave them now. No goodbyes. That was the rule.

"You alright there lad?" Brynjolf asked of him as he tore past him in the Ragged Flagon, but he did not turn back to look at him or answer. He didn't think he could stand it if Brynjolf tried to kill him too.

Just like he had but an hour ago with Sharli, he wound his way through the Vaults and the Warrens until he came to Gah-Ju's room, this time arriving to discover it had been cleared and Gah-Ju was ready and waiting for him, a bag slung over one of his shoulders and it was clear from its size that they were travelling light.

Mog did not say a word of what had passed to Gah-Ju, and if his pain showed in his expression, the Argonian did not comment on it. He remained in perfect silence, not finding any want to comment on the fact that they were navigating their way out of Riften through a part of the sewer system that even he had never explored, nor could he find the effort to reply to the little amount of small-talk that Gah-Ju made with anything other than incoherent grunts and mumbles. There was a hollowness within him now as not only had he lost Sharli that day, but that sense of always being connected to her had shattered too. In her last moments, he hadn't even known who she was.

They came out of a tunnel a little way beyond the walls of the city and tied to a nearby tree was a black stallion, large and with impressive, prominent muscles bound in its legs. Gah-Ju tried to get him to talk now, clearly worried he was depressed by their departure and the loss of contact with everyone, but he could not talk. His silence was his mourning and he had to hold onto it for at least a few moments more.

It was only when he was mounted up on the horse, kept safe and sheltered between Gah-Ju's arms and they had swiftly begun riding out into the unknown that he allowed himself to break down and cry, his body rattled with choppy, uncontrollable sobs. Behind him, Gah-Ju did not comment, instead he simply tightened his arms around his shoulders and allowed him to collapse back into him.

As promised, they disappeared.